I am a political activist who has worked and lived in the West Bank of the Occupied Palestinian Territories. This blog chronicles my time in Palestine and also provides news and analysis about Palestine and the situation on the ground in the Occupied Palestinian Territories.

Thursday, December 24, 2015

once
again its Christmas. As we celebrate with family and friends, we also
remember that it is another year that the city of the Christ is under Israeli
military occupation, along with the rest of Palestine. Once more,
Occupied Bethelehem and the rest of Occupied Palestine celebrate Christmas
under a brutal military occupation.

But despite Israel's occupation and apartheid regime, the Palestinian people
celebrate life. Not just every Christmas, but every day, every week, every
month and every year. They resist and demand dignity and celebrate joy
and happiness with those they love, in spite of Israel's brutality and human
rights abuses.

Each year, Palestinian activists seek to highlight both the oppression that the
Palestinian people face, while also celebrating their humanity. They
display yet again their resistance and sumoud (steadfastness) against Israel's
ongoing atrocities, war crimes and apartheid regime. This year, in the
days before Christmas, Palestinians raised an Tree of Resistance in Occupied
Bethlehem, representing oppression, life and resistance in Palestine.

The tree was raised outside of the Church of the Nativity in Occupied
Bethlehem, where Jesus was supposedly born more than two millenium ago.
The tree, an 2000 year old olive tree, had been recently uprooted by Israeli
Occupatioin forces from the village of Bir Ouna near Occupied Bethelehem.
The tree was uprooted in order for Israel to build the apartheid wall, to
further segregate Palestinians in the Bethlehem area.

The 2000 year old tree now in Manager Square was decorated with symbols of
Israel's occupation, as well as symbols of resistance. Decorated with
tear gas canisters, as well as photos of Palestinians killed or detained by
Israel's occupation forces. Amongst the decorations are also Palestinian
national symbols of resistance, such as keffiyah and sling shots.

Mayor of Bethlehem, Vera Baboun explained: "The tree is our message .. we
plant our roots and we are rooted to this land. Oliver trees are the trees of
life. We see our people's eyes and hopes of our women and the dreams oif men
reflected off this tree".

Mayor Baboun noted how all Bethlehem’s population, regardless of religion, live
under occupation: “We are talking about settlements, we are talking about land
confiscation, we are talking about the wall. Can you imagine, on 82 percent of
the land we can do nothing without an Israeli permit? Baboun went on to note that Israel has
recently decided to confiscate 25 acres of land from the northern border of the
Bethlehem area, saying “this is the suffocation of Bethlehem”.

Mazen
Al-Izza from the Popular Struggle Coordiantion Committee, who organised the
raising of the tree said: “Today we place the tree of life here, in the
Nativity Church courtyard, as a form of resistance, decorated with the remnants
of the occupation’s weapons used to oppress the Palestinian resistance in order
for the world to see.” He went on to say: “This tree was planted in
Palestine during the time of Christ and it is proof of the sanctity of
Palestine. The occupation uprooted the tree of peace from the land of
peace".

“This
tree will remain in the Nativity Church courtyard until the end of the
Christmas celebrations ... we are here to highlight the violations and
injustice the Palestinians are subject to.”

Earlier
in the week, many Palestinian municipalities toned down their public Christmas
celebration as a result of the increased violence by Israel and in memory of
the more than 124 Palestinian killed by the Israeli state since October.

While the Christmas festivities have been limited, they have not been
cancelled. According to Reverend Ashraf Tannous, Lutheran Pastor of Beit Sahour
(next to Bethelehem): “Not only is it [Christmas] a Christian celebration, it
is a national celebration. This celebration is celebrated by everyone
regardless of religion. We are all celebrating this season.” He went on
to say: “The agenda of the occupation is to stop us celebrating, to stop us
lighting the tree, or singing carols...but in-spite of the desperate situation
in the Holy Land we still celebrate.”

Father Jamal Khader, Rector of the Latin Patriarchate Seminary explained
that the toning down of the Christmas celebrations (rather than cancelling
them) is to send a message: “It’s a message to show there is something
wrong and we cannot tolerate this injustice. This is a message for ourselves
and for the world - we are still suffering.”

On 18 December, Palestinains also staged a Christmas demonstration, dressed as
Santa Claus's. The protesters marched on Israel's apartheid wall in
Occupied Bethlehem, shouting slogans against Israel's occupation. The
protesters also carried posters which read: “Palestinian Christians and
Muslims pray for this Christmas to be the last under occupation”. Israeli occupation forces opened fire on the
unarmed Santa Claus clad protesters, firing tear gas, rubber coated steel
bullets and live ammunition. At least three Palestinian protesters were injured
by the live ammunition fired by the Israeli military.

I have included below
photos of resistance from Occupied Bethelehem and Palestine - including photos
of the resistance tree and protests earlier this week against Israel's
occupation.
I have also written in previous years about the impact of Israel's occupation
on Bethelehem, as well as posted up images of resistance. You can read my
earlier posts by clicking here:

CHRISTMAS
IN OCCUPIED BETHLEHEM: A LIVING CALL FOR FREEDOM AND DIGNITYAt
Christmas time, occupied Bethelehem becomes the symbol for the entirity of
Occupied Palestine. The struggle against Israel's occupation and apartheid
regime for dignity and freedom is the struggle of all Palestinians living under
occupation, as well as those living in exile and inside Palestine 48 (Israel).

As 2015 draws to a close, Palestinians have spent yet another year under
Israel's brutal occupation. They have remained sumoud and have continued to
resist their oppressors and the oppression they face each day, week, month and
year.

Once again as the year draws to a conclusion, it is time for us to once more
recommit to the struggle for a free Palestine. To stand in solidarity with the
Palestinian people and demand they have self-determination, human rights,
justice, freedom and dignity.

Registered non-profit groups are lavishly funding with tax-deductible U.S. dollars the same West Bank settlements the Obama administration considers obstacles to peace.

Uri Blau | 07 December, 2015 | Haaretz

Private U.S. donors are massively funding Israeli settlements by using a network of tax-exempt nonprofits, which funnelled more than $220 million (about 850 million shekels) to Jewish communities in the West Bank in 2009-2013 alone, a Haaretz investigation has found.

The funding is being used for anything from buying air conditioners to supporting the families of convicted Jewish terrorists, and comes from tax-deductible donations made to around 50 U.S.-based groups.

Thanks to their status as nonprofits, these organizations are not taxed on their income and donations made to them are tax deductible – meaning the U.S. government is incentivizing and indirectly supporting the Israeli settlement movement, even though it has been consistently opposed by every U.S. administration for the past 48 years.

The findings also show that while Israel’s political right often criticizes left-wing organizations for receiving foreign donations – and has made several attempts to curtail such funding – groups that support the settlements also receive extensive funding from abroad, albeit from different sources.

While left-wing NGOs and human rights groups receive large donations from foreign governments and institutions, Israeli settlement groups are mostly supported by private individuals who donate through nonprofit organizations.

Low transparency requirements in both the United States and Israel make it difficult to gather comprehensive information on all of the donors, but some of the benefactors are known and include major donors to Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu. Some also donate to the U.S. Republican Party.

These and other issues will be detailed as part of Haaretz’s in-depth coverage of U.S. funding of settlements, which will be published over the next few weeks.

Legal aid for Jewish terrorists

Conducted over the last year, the Haaretz investigation exhaustively analyzed thousands of documents from the tax filings and official papers of dozens of American and Israeli nonprofit organizations.

The probe found that at least 50 organizations from across the United States are involved in raising funds for settlements and settlement activities in the occupied territories.

Their revenues between 2009 and 2013 – the last year for which there is extensive data – amounted to over $281 million. Most of these funds came from donations, while some came from returns on capital investments.

Nearly 80 percent of this income (about $224 million) was transferred to the occupied territories as grants, mostly through Israeli nonprofits.

In 2013 alone, these organizations raised $73 million and allotted $54 million in grants.

Initial data for 2014 suggests that figures for last year could be even higher.

Haaretz’s investigation shows some of the funding has gone toward providing legal aid to Jews accused or convicted of terrorism, and supporting their families, through an Israeli nonprofit called Honenu. Annual reports filed by the group with Israeli authorities show that Honenu received nearly 600,000 shekels ($155,000) – 20 percent of its income – from U.S. sources last year.

Among those who benefited from the group’s support in 2013 were the family of Ami Popper, who murdered seven Palestinian laborers in 1990, and members of the Bat Ayin Underground, which attempted to detonate a bomb at a girls’ school in East Jerusalem in 2002.

In the past, Honenu has also raised money for Prime Minister Yitzhak Rabin’s assassin, Yigal Amir, who is serving a life sentence for his crime.

“Honenu, a legal aid organization, has always operated within the law and only in accordance with its goals,” the group said in a statement to Haaretz. It added that, due to confidentiality rules, it could not discuss specific cases, but said it has provided aid to thousands of suspects, including Israeli police officers, soldiers and civilians.

From yeshivas to buying buildings

One of the largest U.S. organizations involved in funding Jewish communities in the West Bank is the Brooklyn-based Hebron Fund. It transferred $5.7 million to the Jewish settlement in Hebron from 2009-2014. Much of the funding has been invested in parks, playgrounds and libraries, in line with the fund’s stated goal of “the improvement of the daily life for the [Jewish] residents of Hebron.”

However, it has also paid the monthly salary (cumulatively amounting to hundreds of thousands of shekels) of Menachem Livni, who headed the nonprofit Renewal of the Jewish Community in Hebron between 2010 and 2012, which in turn was funded by the U.S. organization.

Menachem Livni in 2009.
Photo credit - Alex Levac

A convicted murderer, Livni was one of the leaders of the Jewish Underground, which operated in the territories in the 1980s, killing three Palestinian students and severely injuring two Palestinian mayors and a Border Police sapper. Livni was sentenced to life imprisonment, but was released after six years.

Dan Rosenstein, executive director of the Hebron Fund, declined to answer questions about the fund’s activities or discuss its donors and beneficiaries.

Another leading source of donations is the Central Fund of Israel, which operates out of the offices of a textile company, owned by the Marcus brothers, in the Manhattan garment district. The fund’s revenues exceeded $19 million in 2013 – a $3 million increase over the preceding year. While many of the groups cited in this investigation have yet to file reports for 2014, the CFI has done so: last year it showed a sharp increase in its revenues, which jumped to $25 million – with almost $23 million forwarded to Israel.

Among the institutions supported by the Central Fund is the Od Yosef Chai yeshiva, in the West Bank settlement of Yitzhar. The heads of the yeshiva, Rabbis Yitzhak Shapira and Yosef Elitzur, are the authors of “The King’s Torah” (“Torat Hamelech”), a book that outlines the circumstances under which it is permissible to kill non-Jews. The two rabbis were questioned by the police, but not prosecuted, on suspicion of inciting racism. Last year, following violent attacks against the Israeli army, Border Police took control of the yeshiva for several months.

In a meeting with a Haaretz reporter, CFI director Jay Marcus said the organization makes donations to a number of Israeli nonprofits operating on both sides of the Green Line (i.e., in Israel proper and the occupied territories). He declined to disclose the percentage of donations going to the settlements, saying it was not an issue and insisted that the money did not serve political purposes.

Despite this massive influx of U.S. dollars, Israel and its taxpayers are the settlement’s main bankrollers. Security, infrastructure construction and educational, religious and cultural activities are all financed by the citizens of Israel, either directly or through municipalities, regional councils and other channels.Money arriving
from the United States is considered more an added luxury for the
settlements, contributing to religious education (such as the financing
of the Neveh Shmuel yeshiva in Efrat); improving living conditions
(air-conditioning units for the dining room in the Ohr Menachem school
in Kiryat Arba); leisure activities (the construction of a promenade
between settlements in the Etzion Bloc); but also the purchasing of
buildings in the West Bank and East Jerusalem (including a house next to
Rachel’s Tomb, near Bethlehem).

Asked whether the granting of tax-exempt status to these organizations did not contradict the U.S. position on settlements, a senior White House official told Haaretz that “the policy of every administration since 1967, Democrat and Republican alike, has been to object to Israeli settlement beyond the 1967 borders.

“The present administration is no different,” the official continued. “Concordant with permanent U.S. policies, this administration never defended or supported any activity associated with the settlements. It doesn’t support or advance any activity that will legitimize them.”

There are many groups in the United States that support all manner of causes and are registered with authorities as 501c3 charities – the designation that grants them tax-exempt status and makes donations to them tax deductible. The running of these charities and the regulations governing them have stirred controversy before: from questions raised earlier this year over donations received by the Clinton Foundation to a recent campaign by John Oliver’s “Last Week Tonight” show to curb the tax privileges granted to televangelists.

The Haaretz investigation adds to this debate, as it shows that the United States is tacitly supporting, through tax-exempt contributions, the growth of the settlements – a process that its government strongly condemns.

Reporting for this story was supported by a grant from the Pulitzer Center on Crisis Reporting http://pulitzercenter.org/

Tuesday, December 1, 2015

Dear friends,It seems once more 18 cows are proving to be a security threat to the state of Israel, along with the very existence of Palestinian film and Palestinian narrative. Israeli Cultural Minister, Miri Regev - who is also a former spokesperson for the Israeli Occupation Forces - is attempting to ban (yet again) the 48mm Film Festival using Israel's draconian "Nakba Law".

In particular, Regev is upset about the film "The Wanted 18", a film about Palestinian non-violent civil disobedience during the First Intifada. During the First Intifada, the village of Beit Sahour, near Bethelehem, lead the Palestinian non-violent resistance, not only refusing to pay taxes to the Israeli state but also boycotting Israeli products and goods. As part of their campaign to boycott Israeli products, they brought 18 cows to produce milk for the village. As the film notes, the cows were deemed a security threat to the state of Israel by the local Israeli military governor, who attempted to confiscate the cows - thus beginning an elaborate attempt by the village to hide the cows in defiance of the Israeli military.

The story of Beit Sahour's cows was one of the first stories of resistance I ever heard my first time in Palestine in 2004. The story was inspiring, as well as very funny in its ridiculousness - with my favourite part being how the Israeli military took photos of the cows and then proceeded to search for them, showing the photos of the cows and demanding to know where they were. So I was extremely excited when I heard a few years ago that a film was being made about Beit Sahour's cows.

I finally got to see the film when it was screened here in Australia as part of the Palestinian Film Festival last month. The film was excellent - not only was it very funny, it was very moving and inspiring. It contained some wonderful archival footage from the First Intifada and it is a wonderful film documenting Palestinian resistance and sumoud. It is no surprise that 18 cows and a film documenting Palestinian resistance and sumoud are considered a security threat to the state of Israel.

I have included below two articles on Regev's attempt to ban the festival. The second on in particular discusses The Wanted 18. I have also included a short and longer version of the trailer for the documentary, which is nominated for the upcoming Academy Awards. You can also check out the film's website, by clicking here

Culture
and Sport Minister Miri Regev has ordered an investigative committee to
be established to examine allegations that a film festival at the Tel
Aviv Cinematheque violates the Nakba Law, which allows the government to
defund organizations presenting Israel's establishment as a
catastrophe, in line with the Palestinian narrative.

The
48mm Festival, founded by anti-occupation NGO Zochrot and scheduled for
December 4-6 at the cinematheque, is also known as The Third
International Film Festival on Nakba and Return. A 2011 amendment to the
state budget law authorizes the finance minister to defund any
institution that encourages incitement, racism or armed struggle against
Israel, or presents Independence Day or the establishment of Israel as a
day of mourning. The High Court rejected a petition to repeal the
amendment, known as the Nakba Law, in 2012.

Regev
stated in an official announcement on Sunday evening that the committee
would be comprised of members of the Censorship Board of Israel, which
will be requested to view the festival films and write reports relative
to the Nakba Law for further discussion and legal consultation within
the ministry.

"The minister will decide based on
these opinions whether to ask the Finance Ministry to invoke the law,"
the ministry announced.

Regev's predecessor, Limor
Livnat, tried to take action against last year's festival. She asserted
the cinematheque was violating the law in hosting the festival. However,
the cinemathque retained its funding despite undergoing a similar
investigative process.

However, Culture Ministry
officials noted that last year Livnat's request was made without first
obtaining professional opinions, examining in depth the films in
question or presenting findings. "Being responsible for public coffers,
we must not shut our eyes when there is fear that the law is being
broken," said Regev. "We must examine the matter on a professional
level.

Liat Rosenberg, Zochrot's CEO, commented: "It
seems to me like one of many attempts, which will happen in the next
festival as well, to exclude the topic of the Nakba and the right of
return from the public agenda. If it were not such a painful and
difficult subject, I gather the minister's attempts would look
ridiculous to me. But I believe the public will vote with its feet, and
instead of silencing these attempts, I honestly invite Minister Regev
and others to come watch the film and try to listen in depth to the
voices arising from within them."

One
of the outstanding films to be screened this year at “48 mm: The
International Festival on Nakba and Return” will require the special
task force recently established by Culture Minister Miri Regev to decide
whether the story of 18 cows – yes, cows – violates Israeli law and can
justify cutting the budget of the Tel Aviv Cinematheque, where the
festival is taking place.

“The Wanted 18,” the
Palestinian candidate for the Oscar in the category of Best Foreign
Film, is an animated documentary that tells a true story. It’s hard to
decide whether the most suitable description is funny, sad or absurd.
The film breathes life into a story from the days of the first intifada,
and leaves Palestinian civilians and Israeli soldiers in supporting
roles in order to clear the stage for a group of cows that steal the
show: They talk, they’re funny, they deal with a long series of dramatic
turning points and manage to do all that in a captivating and
heartwarming manner by means of charming puppet animation.

The
culture minister announced on Sunday that the task force will be asked
to examine the films to be shown at the festival, which is sponsored by
Zochrot, an organization that works to raise awareness of the Nakba and
promote the right of return, and is celebrating its third year at the
Tel Aviv Cinematheque. The task force will have to decide based on the
Budget Foundations Law, which allows the finance minister to fine an
institution that receives money from the government if it has funded a
work that encourages incitement, racism or support of an armed struggle
against the State of Israel, or presents Independence Day or the day of
the state’s establishment as a day of mourning.

The
case of “The Wanted 18” will be very interesting, because the filmmakers
have refused until now to show it in Israel, the director refuses to be
interviewed by Israeli journalists, and recently he also publicly
attacked Israel for preventing him from participating in the film’s
American debut.

The film, which will be screened in
Jaffa on Sunday, combines amusing stop-motion animation, illustrations,
filmed interviews and archival material to tell an interesting and not
very well known story that took place in the town of Beit Sahour in
1987. A group of intellectuals and professionals (teachers, an academic,
a pharmacist, a butcher, et al) from the city near Bethlehem decided at
the time to stage a nonviolent revolt, by boycotting Israeli products.

They
realized that such a step would require them to produce the products
that they would stop purchasing from Israel on their own. After deciding
to boycott Israel’s largest dairy producer Tnuva, they decided to buy
cows from which they could produce milk for their own use.

For
that purpose a Palestinian teacher from Beit Sahour was sent to buy
cows from a kibbutz. The cows were housed in an improvised cowshed in
Beit Sahour. They sent a representative to the United States to learn
everything necessary about raising and milking cows, and
enthusiastically devoted themselves to the new and totally unfamiliar
agricultural pursuit.Unheroic pursuit

But
the Israeli army was far less enthusiastic. The person responsible for
the region on behalf of the Israel Defense Forces decided that the
initiative was dangerous, ordered the Palestinian owners of the cows to
get rid of them quickly, and when he discovered that the cows had been
transferred to a hiding place, the strongest army in the Middle East
embarked on a determined if unheroic pursuit of the 18 missing animals.

In
order to tell the story the film’s two directors, Palestinian Amer
Shomali and Canadian Paul Cowan, found the protagonists on both sides
and conducted a series of interviews with them.

Jalal
Oumsieh, the high school teacher who bought the cows, says, “The moment
I saw the cows I felt that we were beginning to understand our dream of
freedom and independence, the moment the cows entered the truck on the
kibbutz and we started driving back to Beit Sahour, we were happy, but
also scared.”

He recounted that the military
governor came to the farm one day with some soldiers. “The first thing
they did was photograph every one of the cows in order to record the
numbers branded on them. He told us we had to get rid of the cows. When I
asked why, he replied – and I quote: ‘These cows are a danger to the
security of the State of Israel.’ I told him I didn’t understand why,
but he said, ‘You have no right to speak or to cast doubt. It’s a
military order and you are obligated to obey.’”

Israeli
interviewees don’t deny the claims. “We had clear orders to handle the
people who established the popular committees [the Palestinian
committees that decided to boycott Israeli produce and to produce
independently] with all our might and all the legal means at our
disposal, in order to prevent a mechanism that would replace the Civil
Administration,” says Shaltiel Lavi, former commander of the Bethlehem
District.

Ehud Zrahiya, who was presented in the
film as the military governor’s adviser on Arab affairs, says “It was
clear that from 17 cows you don’t build a dairy economy that can provide
the needs of an entire population,” and that the entire issue was only a
curiosity. But it developed into a nonviolent rebellion that caused
most of the city’s residents to stop paying taxes and bills to Israel,
causing quite a headache for the army.

As to the
cows, after they were hidden somewhere else in Beit Sahour, the IDF
began a search for them, with hundreds of soldiers and even two
helicopters. “It became a joke to see the Israeli army searching for the
cows of the intifada,” says Oumsieh’s wife, a geology professor.
Oumsieh adds with a smile, “They had pictures of the cows, and they
asked people whether they had seen them.”

Cow’s-eye view

The
interviewees tell the story from their point of view, the animation
adds a comic element when it often shows events through the eyes of the
talking cows, and the choice of this technique proves itself when it
succeeds in emphasizing the absurd
aspect of the story. In an interview with the British weekly The
Observer, when asked about his decision to make a funny movie, Shomali
said: “It was quite frightening, but I’m a cartoonist and humor is part
of the way in which I see things. I believe that a nation that is
incapable of looking at its wounds with humor will never be able to heal
them. First be aware of your shitty situation and then laugh at
yourselves.”

Shomali said that one of the challenges
was the lack of suitable archival material. “Almost all the material we
found focused on the violent aspect of the intifada: Israeli soldiers
breaking bones, killing Palestinians and burning their homes; mothers
crying; Palestinians throwing incendiary devices or breaking windows in
an Israeli bus. There were no materials of a Palestinian milking a cow
or planting in his backyard in order to grow his own food, as part of
the boycott of Israeli products. No such Palestinian images were filmed,
so we created an alternative archive and used animation to create it.”

Shomali,
who lives in Ramallah, refused an interview with Haaretz and the
filmmakers refused to send Haaretz a copy of the film to watch in
advance, as is usual for festival films – the producers also refused to
show their film at the International Film Festival in Jerusalem or in
the DocAviv Festival in Tel Aviv. “Palestinian artists are afraid that
screening their film here will look like a type of support for Israel or
a type of normalization,” says Jerusalem Cinematheque program director
Elad Samorzik.

The filmmakers accepted the
invitation to show their film at the “48 mm” festival, but on condition
that it be screened in Jaffa rather than at the Tel Aviv Cinematheque.
The executive director of Zochrot, which is producing the festival,
explains: “The Tel Aviv Cinematheque is an institution funded by the
government, and we are increasingly seeing a trend that Palestinian
artists refuse to have their films screened in such institutions.”

Palestinian co-director Amer Shomali. In
June the film was shown in the U.S. at the Human Rights Watch Festival
in New York. Shomali was supposed to talk to the audience afterwards,
but was unable to attend. He claimed that Israel had prevented him from
going from Ramallah to Jerusalem in order to obtain a visa for the U.S.
“Official Israeli organizations told me that my request was denied for
security reasons. And I’m not alone. The same is true of tens of
thousands of other Palestinians living under Israeli rule in the
occupied territories.

“My co-director Paul Cowan and
I wanted ‘The Wanted 18’ to be a festival of freedom and creativity. We
wanted to illustrate the power of civil disobedience – then and today –
in the face of military occupation and oppression. I believe we
succeeded. And now Israel is making it clear that everything is in
effect under its control, but it’s not really. We Palestinians
repeatedly find ways to cross, to bypass and to extricate ourselves from
the barriers to equal rights and freedom put in place by Israel.”

Is peace possible?

So
what films will the members of the Film Review Council who will compose
the task force established by Regev to watch the films of the “48 mm”
festival actually see? The festival includes four short films by local
artists that were produced especially for the festival: The animated
film “Man with Two Beards” directed by Amir Yatziv, based on a
collection of illustrations from Israeli and Palestinian history
textbooks; the documentary “Anava Interchange,” about two Israeli
directors who, 30 years apart, documented the same Palestinian refugee
returning to visit his village; “Guava,” an experimental film by Thalia
Hoffman about human situations on refugee routes in the Middle East; and
“Lighthouse,” about a 71-year-old Palestinian who wakes up in his new
home in Lod.

“Roshmia” is a documentary about an
elderly Palestinian couple living in Roshmia, the last natural wadi in
Haifa, who are forced to leave their home and see that as another
expulsion. “On the Bride’s Side” is an Italian documentary in which a
Palestinian poet and an Italian journalist meet five Palestinian and
Syrian refugees in Milan, who have fled from the war in Syria to Europe,
and offer to help them get to Sweden disguised as a wedding party; and
“Sar’a,” a documentary directed by Michael Kaminer, who was born on
Kibbutz Tzora and using archival materials and conversations with the
kibbutz founders and refugees from the neighboring village of Sar’a
reveals the story of the expelled residents of the Palestinian village.

Finally,
Eyal Sivan in his film “Aqabat Jaber” returns to the refugee camp where
he shot a film in 1987 and asks whether peace between Israel and
Palestine is possible with the return of the refugees to their homeland.
After the Israeli army left the area, the refugee camp is under
Palestinian control and its residents are still unable to return to the
villages from which they were expelled in 1948.

Tuesday, November 17, 2015

On Tuesday, the Palestinian Health Ministry has reported that, following the death of a Mohammad Monir Hasan Saleh, 24,
24, from Ramallah, the number of Palestinians, killed by Israeli fire
since October 1st, has arrived to 89, including 18 children and four
women, and that 10.000 Palestinians have been injured.

Mohammad Monir Hasan Saleh

In
a press release, the Health Ministry stated that the soldiers shot and
killed, on Tuesday, Mohammad Monir Hasan Saleh, 24 years of age, from
'Aroura village, northwest of the central West Bank city of Ramallah,
and injured at least two others.

It said that the number of Palestinians, killed by Israeli fire since
October 1, has arrived to 89, including 18 in the Gaza Strip and one in
the Negev, and that among the slain Palestinians are eighteen women and
four children (including a mother and her baby in Gaza.)

The Ministry stated that more 10.000 Palestinians have been injured in
the same period in different parts of occupied Palestine.

“On average, the army kills two Palestinians and injures around 217 every day,” it said.

In its report, the Ministry said that at least 1450 Palestinians have
been shot with live Israeli army fire, in the West Bank and the Gaza
Strip, since October 1.

1065 were shot with rubber-coated metal bullets, and have all been
hospitalized, while more than 1100 Palestinians, who were shot with
rubber-coated steel bullets, received treatment by medics without the
need for hospitalization.

6500 Palestinians suffered the effects of tear gas inhalation, 255
suffered fractures and bruises after being assaulted by Israeli soldiers
and paramilitary settlers, and more than 25 suffered burns due to
Israeli gas bombs and concussion grenades.

The number of Palestinians shot with live Israeli army fire in the West
Bank is at least 1010, in addition to 950 who were shot with
rubber-coated steel bullets. In Gaza, 440 were shot with live rounds and
115 with rubber-coated steel bullets.

Names Of The 89 Palestinians Killed By Israeli Fire Since October 1st

The Following is a list of names of all Palestinians shot and killed by
Israeli fire in the occupied West Bank, including Jerusalem, and the
Gaza Strip, and one in the Negev, in the period between Thursday October
1st and the end of Tuesday November 17th, 2015, as confirmed by the
Palestinian Health Ministry.

Wednesday, November 4, 2015

Dear friends,please find below my latest article published by Redflag on the history of Palestinian resistance. This article is currently only available in the hard copy of Red Flag (however, an earlier, muchshorter version called "Why we support the Palestinian rebellion" is available online, click here ).

You can check out Redflag for my other online articles on Palestine, Aboriginal Rights and South Korea (and the occasional other subject/issue) by clicking here.

RedFlag is a strong supporter of the Palestinian people and the Palestinian struggle for justice and self-determination, as well as other struggles for justice in Australia and around the world.

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Fifty-three
Palestinians are now dead, including 11 children, as young
Palestinians across the Occupied Territories have risen up against
Israeli occupation, apartheid and colonialism.

Thirty-eight
have been killed in Occupied East Jerusalem and the West Bank and 14
in Gaza. More than two-thirds of the dead have been younger than 20
years old. At least 1,900 have been injured by Israeli gunfire and
thousands others have suffered from the effects of teargas, while
nearly 900 have been detained by the Israeli state in mass arrests.

A
history of resistance

According
to Palestinian historian Mazin Qumsiyeh, this is not the third
intifada; it is the fourteenth. The young Palestinians, both male and
female, currently on the streets resisting Israel’s occupation and
apartheid regime are marching in the footsteps of previous
generations who struggled against not only the Israeli state but also
British imperialism and Zionist settler-colonialism during the
British occupation of Palestine (1917-1948).

Palestinian
opposition to Zionist settler-colonialism resulted in bloody riots in
1920, 1921 and 1929, leaving hundreds of Palestinians and Zionists
dead. In 1936, one of the longest strikes in modern history was
launched as part of a three year anti-colonial uprising. The
1936-1939 revolt involved the entire population, with popular
committees set up in every city and village.

As
repression of the non-violent struggle escalated, thousands of young
Palestinian men and women took up arms against the British military
and police. In the end it took more than 35,000 British and Zionist
troops to put down the revolt, at the cost of approximately 5,000
Palestinian lives.

Almost a
decade later, more than 1 million Palestinians were forced to flee
their homes during the 1948 Nakba (“catastrophe”), ethnically
cleansed from their homeland by Zionist militias. More than 750,000
fled to neighbouring Arab states and 100-150,000 became internally
displaced refugees in the newly formed Israeli state.

Between
1949 and 1966, Palestinians inside the Zionist state were placed
under martial law. Despite being subject to regular curfew and
restrictions being placed on their education, employment and
political activity, Palestinians continued to resist, organising
political parties and protests despite threats and intimidation.

Palestinian
refugees in exile also resisted Israel’s ethnic cleansing by
organising rallies and protests demanding the right of return to
their homes. In 1957, exiled Palestinian students formed Fatah, which
eight years later launched an armed struggle to try and win back
their homeland.

In the
wake of Israel’s seizure and occupation of the West Bank, East
Jerusalem, Gaza and the Golan Heights in June 1967, Palestinians once
again suffered ethnic cleansing and dispossession. Yet they kept
resisting despite violent Israeli military repression.

On 8
December 1987, an Israeli truck ploughed into a car killing four
Palestinians in Gaza. Angry demonstrations erupted, marking the
beginning of what popularly became known as the First Intifada. A
grassroots mass uprising, similar in many ways to the 1936 strike and
revolt, the Intifada represented a “shaking off” of Israel’s
occupation and involved the vast majority of Palestinians. The
uprising was led politically by the Unified Leadership of the
Uprising (UNLU), which comprised all the major Palestinian factions.

The UNLU
called for the formation of popular committees in each village and
town to oppose Israel’s occupation through a coordinated boycott of
Israeli goods, a refusal to pay Israeli taxes, a boycott of working
in Zionist settlements and a general strike and closure of all
businesses for designated periods both in the Occupied Territories
and inside Israel.

In
response to the uprising, Israel placed the Occupied Territories
under curfew and instituted a policy of mass arrests, accompanied by
the beating and shooting of unarmed Palestinian demonstrators and
mass exile of Palestinians. Unable to stop the Intifada by force, the
Israeli ruling class reluctantly entered into “peace negotiations”
with the Palestine Liberation Organisation.

In late
1993, Palestinian leader Yasser Arafat and Israeli prime minister
Yitzak Rabin sign the Declaration of Principles on Interim
Self-Government Arrangements, also known as the Oslo Accords, which
formally brought the intifada to an end. While the Accords were
heralded as laying a foundation for interim self-rule in the Occupied
Territories, which would eventually lead to the establishment of a
Palestinian state, they only led to a deepening of Israel’s
occupation and oppression of the Palestinian people.

The
Second Intifada erupted on 29 September 2000 in response to Israeli
opposition leader Ariel Sharon’s provocative visit to the Al-Aqsa
mosque compound. By the end of the first day, seven Palestinians were
dead and 300 wounded. In response, demonstrations spread like
wildfire across the Occupied Territories and within Israel.

Israel’s
repression of the protests was brutal. More than 1.3 million live
rounds of ammunition were fired in just a few days. In the first five
days Israeli occupation forces killed 47 Palestinians, including
several Palestinian citizens of Israel, and injured almost 2,000. By
the end of four weeks, 141 Palestinians were dead and nearly 6,000
injured.

While
the Second Intifada had begun, like previous uprisings, as a
grassroots rebellion, it became increasingly militarised as a result
of Israel’s brutal repression, which made popular protest almost
impossible. The asymmetrical conflict led to the use of suicide
bombings, resulting in the deaths of approximately 500 Israelis.

Israel’s
campaign to repress the militarised intifada resulted in 2,859
Palestinians killed and tens of thousands injured over four years.
Israel also demolished more than 3,700 Palestinian homes and jailed
more than 7,000 Palestinians.

A
new uprising

The
decades of ethnic cleansing, the growth of illegal colonies, the
lawlessness of the illegal settlers, the theft of land, the
suffocation of commercial life, and the collaboration of the
Palestinian leadership mean that the character of this latest round
of resistance is significantly different to those of the past.

As Omar
Barghouti, writing at US news site Salon.com, explained:

“This
phase of popular Palestinian resistance has broken out spontaneously,
in reaction to exceptionally repressive policies of the most racist,
settler-dominated and far-right government in Israel’s history.

“Since
Benjamin Netanyahu’s return to power in 2009, Israel’s descent
into unmasked, right wing extremism has accelerated alarmingly …
[A] steady stream of discriminatory, anti-democratic laws targeting
Palestinian citizens of Israel, and to a lesser extent Jewish-Israeli
critics of Israel’s apartheid regime, have been passed by the
Israeli parliament …Following
a recent visit to occupied Palestine, South African Parliamentary
Speaker Baleka Mbete wrote, ‘Apartheid in South Africa was a picnic
compared to what we have seen in the occupied territories’.”

Israel’s
occupation is marked by both its extensive military control of
Palestinian territory but also its settlement expansion. According to
Israeli human rights group B’Tselem, by 2010, Israeli settlers and
their organisations were in control of 42 percent of the West Bank.
In the 20 years since the Oslo Accords, the number of Israeli
settlers in the West Bank and East Jerusalem has increased from
260,000 to 650,000.

The
lawlessness of these illegal colonists has been a major factor in
sparking the current rebellion.

Since
Israel’s evacuation of settlers from Gaza in 2005, Zionist settlers
in the West Bank and East Jerusalem have carried out a campaign of
violent “price tag” (revenge) attacks against Palestinians. As
Isabel Kershner noted on 3 October in the New York Times, these
attacks are designed to “exact a price from local Palestinians or
from the Israeli security forces for any action taken against their
settlement enterprise”.

On 31
July, colonists fire bombed the home of a Palestinian family in the
village of Duma. The attack resulted in an 18-month-old baby, Ali
Dawabsheh, being burnt to death. The rest of his family sustained
horrific burns. Ali’s parents, Saad and Reham, died a week later as
a result of their injuries. On 10 September, Israel’s defence
minister Moshe Ya’alon told the Israeli media: “We know who is
responsible, but we will not expose those findings in order to
protect our intelligence sources”.

While
the previous intifadas were dominated by the Palestinian factions,
Palestinian youth today are organising through their own networks,
largely via social media, to coordinate their rebellion. As one
Palestinian youth told the Middle East Eye on 12 October:

“Almost
everyone is part of a party, or at least they support a party in
Palestine, but that is something separate from what’s happening
right now … Right now we are going to the streets against the
Israeli occupation in demand of our rights, we don’t need our
parties for that, no one is talking about parties, this is an
intifada from the people alone”.

Why
we support the Palestinians

The
Palestinian youth, who are on the front lines throwing stones, are
there because they have never known one single day when they could
move freely.

They
have never known one single day of being able to attend school
without fear that the Israeli military might fire tear-gas into their
classrooms or invade their school yard.

They
have never known one single day when they did not experience the
terror of night raids or the Israeli military invading their villages
and their homes or the homes of their family, friends and loved ones.

The
young men and women on the front lines have witnessed three major
attacks on Gaza in six years. They watched as more than 4,100 of
their people were massacred in these attacks, trapped in the largest
open-air prison in the world.

As
veteran Israeli journalist Amira Hass so eloquently wrote in a 7
October article for the Israeli newspaper Haaretz:

“The
Palestinians are fighting for their life, in the full sense of the
word. We Israeli Jews are fighting for our privilege as a nation of
masters, in the full ugliness of the term.

“That
we notice there’s a war on only when Jews are murdered does not
cancel out the fact that Palestinians are being killed all the time,
and that all the time we are doing everything in our power to make
their lives unbearable. Most of the time it is a unilateral war,
waged by us, to get them to say ‘yes’ to the master, thank you
very much for keeping us alive in our reservations. When something in
the war’s one-sidedness is disturbed, and Jews are murdered, then
we pay attention.

“Young
Palestinians do not go out to murder Jews because they are Jews, but
because we are their occupiers, their torturers, their jailers, the
thieves of their land and water, their exilers, the demolishers of
their homes, the blockers of their horizon.”

As Hass
notes, the goal of Israel’s unilateral war is to force Palestinians
to give up all of their national demands.

But for
more than 100 years, Palestinians have remained sumoud (steadfast);
they have never given up their dream of independence, nor have they
given up on their homeland. They have shown time and time again that
they will not buckle, no matter how strong their occupier or how weak
their own leadership. They will always find the strength to resist.

It is
our job to stand in solidarity with them.

[Kim
Bullimore co-organised the first Australian national Boycott,
Divestment and Sanctions (BDS) Conference in support of Palestine in
2010 and is the author of ”BDS and the struggle for a free
Palestine”, which appears in the book, Left turn: political essays
for the new left. Kim blogs at Live from occupied Palestine.]

Nakba Keys

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About Me

I am an activist who, at different times over several years, has lived and worked as a international volunteer in the West Bank of the Occupied Palestinian Territories. This blog is an account of my time in Palestine and also carries original news, comment and analysis (as well as reprints) on Palestine. Live from Occupied Palestine campaigns for an end to Israeli apartheid and the brutal illegal occupation of the Palestinian people. You are welcome to reprint any material from this blog authored by Kim, however, please acknowledge the author and the blog website